our digest email How do Indians feel when they go back to live in India after living in US for 5+ years? Balaji Viswanathan, Indian by Birth. Indian by Thought. 817 upvotes by Siddhartha Bagaria, Anand Ramakrishnan, Greg Hammond, Mayank Gupta, (more) I went to the US when I graduated from college. Then lived there for 5.5 years and returned 2 years ago. Now, relocating back to the US. Here is my experience:     1    A lot of India has changed. The stuff that wowed me when I first went to the US - big cars, freeways, huge malls, Apple gadgets, clubbing, quality schools, swimming pools, international cuisine (Ethiopian, Thai, South East Asian, Mexican), driving past supercars and online shopping... have come to India too. In many of the highways here, I could easily zip at 80mph+. The gated communities are maintained really clean inside and have many of the facilities that you could find in upscale US apartment communities.  In that sense, I didn’t have a big shock moving back almost after 6 years.     2    However, just as India is taking the positives of the US, we are even faster at taking negatives. The new India seems a lot more impersonal and the newly minted upper middle class filled with attitude. In the communities, I lived in the past 2 years, there is quite frosty relationship among the neighbors and even a simple Diwali cracker could invite a frown. However, older Indian middle class apartments are still personal, where people would walk-in without appointments, give sweets and enjoy the festivals. And the maids are now becoming almost unaffordable (positive sign, if there were no unemployment).     3    Although Indian government have gone slightly more efficent and techie, they are still a pain in the ass if you are an entrepreneur. In a sense, for me the certain charm of India is gone. Temples are more commercialized these days, there is a new charlatan “guru” every corner, schools have gone really pricey, running a business is still very hard and good apartments are unaffordable in most metros.